I have been in the city only a little while--if I take the calendar's word for it; but it has seemed long to me, for the season of the year is that when everything is very dull. All the people who have country homes are reluctantly bidding them good-by and the signs of fall cleaning are disfiguring all the city homes. The theaters are publishing long lists of attractions which are coming later on, but now there is nothing. The only politicians I have seen I have met accidentally up at the _Times_ office--and they are all old, and wear long frock coats,--and look as if they chewed tobacco. So, as I promised in the first chapter that I was not going to bother you with daily details and venison pasties, I suppose I shall have to close this chapter without recording _one_ thing of interest. I can assure you, however, that you do not regret the dullness of it _half_ so much as I do. But hold! Shall I forget Neva? Self-centered thing that I am! Because the last three weeks have been dreary and barren to me shall I not rejoice in the happiness of some one else? Among the other unimportant things which I have done since coming up to the city I have helped Neva get installed in a boarding-school for young ladies. An expensive place, it is, where for a certain unnaturally large sum each year they teach you to broaden your a's, sharpen your eyes, and loath your home surroundings for ever afterward. The matter had been under discussion for some days before I left home, and I set forth the pros and especially the _cons_ to Mrs. Sullivan. But the humiliation of the fit doctor's visit was fresh and galling; and Neva's boarding-school experience would more than turn her rival's triumph into Dead Sea fruit. She must be entered as a student at the beautifully named college. They came up together a week before time for the school to open, Neva and her mother, so that they could learn their way about the city a little and also buy Neva some new music and a supply of winter clothes. Now, Neva's songs, while new and silly, are sung in her buoyant young voice with so much gusto on the caressing words that they are a kind of actual music; a joyous sort of wholesome music, like the sound of the postman's whistle on a sunshiny morning, when you know that he is bringing you a love-letter! There goes my imagination again, for I never had a love-letter in my life! Not even a post-card, and it's been _three weeks_. Possibly dignified people do not write post-cards! Especially gubernatorial timber! Now, what started this digression? Oh, yes, Neva's silly songs which she bought while she was up here those few days before school commenced. I started out to say that they did not seem at all silly to me this time. I actually caught myself singing them over and over again and found considerable beauty in one that was a plea to some hardhearted beloved to make "ev'ry dream come true."